Baconelite

Just wanted to say that the problem seems to have fixed itself somehow. Thanks for the help, though.

It has crossed my mind. It's an onboard sound card. I don't think it's my headphones though, as there is a difference from the back to the front audio port. I've tried plugging my headphones into my laptop and other devices and there have been no issues. What worries me most is that it gets worse in more demanding games and it might be the GPU.

Hey fellas, I'm having trouble figuring out the cause of an issue and I'm hoping you can help me. Okay so lately I've noticed a faint electrical/static noise from my headset when I'm gaming. I first noticed it in Star Citizen where it was quite loud and high pitched, but didn't think much of it as the game is nowhere near done. Later I noticed it in Minecraft, which I have completely muted, so I thought it was very odd, although it was not as bad as in Star Citizen. It was also present in FTL, but I turned on the frame limiter and VSYNC and it almost disappeared completely. I even sometimes get it when scrolling on web pages, including here on linustechtips. I have googled a bit and read that it could be because of electrical interference and I tried plugging my computer in from a different plug separated from the others, but no success, I was still getting the noise. I am currently using the back audio port of my PC and I have tried using the front audio port instead, but it's MUCH worse on the front. When I unplug or plug in USB devices on the back, the noise disappears for a few seconds but always comes back. These are my specs: Motherboard: MSI Z87-G45 GPU: ASUS GTX 970 Strix, not OC CPU: i5 4670k, not OC, cooled by a Coolermaster Hyper 212 EVO I believe it's called. Memory: 2x8 GB @ 1600 mhz. They are not identical sticks, but same memory and speed. PSU: Corsair CX600 80+ bronze Storage: 120 GB Kingston SSD for the OS, 1 TB HDD for games. Just installed a new 240GB SSD but it hasn't changed anything (didn't expect it to either). Any ideas what could be causing it? I'm really hoping it isn't my hardware.

Alright, thanks everyone! I'll get a new PSU asap. I was almost certain that was the problem too. Anyone got a PSU recommendation? After getting the 970 it'd be nice if it wasn't too expensive.

Thanks for the quick replies! I know my PSU is ancient and terrible. The thing is that the 760 uses an 8 pin and a 6 pin connector. I used the adapter for that too.

I just got an ASUS Strix GTX 970 OC. I installed it and later observed that my computer would reboot when playing games. The computer would just turn off and then turn back on. I know it's not the temperature because after closely monitoring the temps, I can say that nothing reaches anything higher than 70C I was sure it was my old PSU that was failing, so I tried to reduce the power taget to 85% in the GPU Tweak software by ASUS, which seemed to work at first, but later it happened when playing Star Citizen and even Rocket League. I also found it weird that it would be the PSU because my old card, a GTX 760, uses more power than the GTX 970. Atleast on paper. My GTX 760 is back in my computer and no problems since. My specs: i5 4670k @ 3.4 - 3.8 GHz Corsair Venceange 8 GB Memory 1600 MHz MSI Z87-G45 Gaming Motherboard MSI GTX 760 Twin Frozr 2GB PSU: Hiper Type-R 480W I know that both the 760 and 970 say they require minimum 500W, but the 760 never had any problems and the 970 is supposed to use less power, so I thought it was all good. Maybe it's also worth mentioning that the ASUS Strix GTX 970 OC uses a single 8 pin connector and I've used a 6 to 8 pin adapter. Thanks for reading and I hope someone can help me